Goldman "Whistleblower" Sues NY Fed For Wrongful Termination

After seven months of investigating Goldman Sachs' legal and compliance divisions, former NYFed examiner Carmen Segarra found numerous conflicts of interest and breach of client ethics (specifically related to three transactions - Solyndra, Capmark, and the El Paso / Kinder Morgan deal) that she believed warranted a downgrade of Goldman's regulatory rating. Her bosses were not happy, concerned that this action would hurt Goldman's ability to do business, and, she alleges, they urged her to change her position. She refused, and as Reuters reports, she was fired and escorted from the building. “I was just documenting what Goldman was doing,” she said. “If I was not able to push through something that obvious, the [NY Fed] certainly won’t be capable of supervising banks when even more serious issues arise.”

A former senior bank examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York filed a wrongful termination lawsuit on Thursday, saying she was fired after refusing to alter a critical examination of Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The former employee, Carmen Segarra, said that in her seven months of examining Goldman's legal and compliance divisions, she found the bank did not have policies to prevent conflicts of interest as required by regulation, a conclusion that might have caused a downgrade of the Wall Street bank's regulatory rating.

As a result of Segarra's findings, the New York Fed's Legal Compliance and Risk team voted to downgrade Goldman's annual rating pertaining to policies and procedures, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in New York.

It is not clear whether the downgrade occurred, but according to the lawsuit, the threat of one startled Michael Silva, who oversees the New York Fed's relationship with Goldman, and Silva's deputy, Michael Koh. The two officials were concerned that a downgrade could cause clients to stop doing business with the Wall Street bank, the lawsuit said.

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Segarra was assigned to Goldman's legal and compliance divisions from October 2011 until May 2012, and looked into three controversial transactions related to Solyndra, Capmark and the merger of El Paso and Kinder Morgan. At that point, Kim, Silva and Koh fired her and had her escorted from the building by security guards after weeks of disputes and pressure to change her examination findings, the lawsuit said.

Goldman had past problems with conflicts. A year earlier, the bank had received a drubbing from the Securities and Exchange Commission and a Senate subcommittee over conflicts related to a mortgage transaction the bank constructed called Abacus. The SEC imposed a $550 million fine on Goldman for the deal.

Segarra was instructed specifically to assess Goldman’s conflict-of-interest policies, including how they worked in a merger between two energy companies: El Paso Corp. and Kinder Morgan.

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Goldman did provide documents showing how it had divided its El Paso and Kinder Morgan bankers into “red and blue teams.” These teams were told they could not communicate with each other — what the industry calls a “Chinese wall” to prevent improper information sharing.

Segarra said Goldman seating charts showed that in one case, opposing team members had adjacent offices. She also determined that three of the El Paso team members had previously worked for Kinder Morgan in key areas.

“They would have needed a Chinese wall in their head,” Segarra said.

On multiple occasions during Segarra’s examination, Goldman executives acknowledged that the bank did not have a firmwide conflict-of-interest policy, she said.

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On March 21, 2012, Segarra presented her conclusion that Goldman lacked an acceptable policy on conflicts to her group of specialists from the other too-big-to-fail banks.

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A summary sheet from the group’s meeting recommended downgrading Goldman from “satisfactory” to “fair” for policies and procedures, the equivalent of a “C” letter grade.

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As the Goldman review moved up the Fed’s supervisory chain, however, Segarra said she began to get pushback.

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“I was just documenting what Goldman was doing,” she said. “If I was not able to push through something that obvious, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York certainly won’t be capable of supervising banks when even more serious issues arise.”

Perhaps one indemnifying issue here is that whereas Goldman has indeed chronically and blatantly transgressed on numerous occasions when it comes to the abuse of its clients, and generally breaching its fiduciary duties, Segarra's description of the internal Chinese wall within the Goldman i-banking division sounds rather conventional and ordinary, and as for a conflict of interest policy - which banks actually really has one? To be sure, there are far greater misdeed for which Goldman can be held accountable, so in some ways the focal point of her complaint is not very strong.

Still, as everyone knows, both Bill Dudley and Stephen Friedman used to be at Goldman, and as we noted Dudley and Goldman chief economist Jan Hatzius periodically did and still meet to discuss "events" at the Pound and Pense.

So while her allegations may be non-definitive, and her wrongfful termination suit is ultimately dropped, there is hope this opens up an inquiry into the close relationship between Goldman and the NY Fed. Alas, since the judicial branch is also under the control of the two abovementioned entities, we very much doubt it.

I had this discussion with my son just yesterday. His position was that such conflicts are unlikely to be resolved with extreme prejudice while I thought the opposite. This is an excellent test case. Does she die? Does her case get thrown out as without merit? Does she get a hush money settlement?

No, they just don't get my twisted sense of humor sometimes. I don't pay attention to down arrows anway (a little trick I learned from the BLS). This isn't the first time I've gotten hammered and probably won't be the last.

I think the breed of apple tree is the problem. Some things cannot be solved except by ruthless trimming or removal of the tree and replacement with another apple tree more suited to the space where you are planting.

I see no evidence of any intelligence on her part, courage and integrity, yes, but not intelligence. However, I see plenty of arrogance, incompetence and stupidity on the part of GS management. There are real Chinese walls that do exist in banking, not between IB or analysts and prop or client trading, but between the actual work that the bank does and any outside "observation" and critical evaluation. Banking regulators and auditors are generally not that bright to begin with and they operate from truly JUVENILE handbooks and frameworks. A banking regulator walking into a bank is supposed to be like a health inspector walking into a mob front restaurant, perhaps they are cited for a cockroaches and can't peddle pasta or Peking duck for a few days, but the [real] spice trade remains out of sight and out of mind... This a stupid amateur hour sloppiness, and if private sector lawyers can't inflict consequences on G/S or the Fed, then I wouldn't hold out any hope for corrective action that doesn't involve lampposts and rope (or a contemporary substitute).

America needs a whole bunch more of these good women and men like Ed Snowden. Those that will put intergrity and morality above the get rich quick and corruptly, mentality. These citizens are the bedrock of a healthy nation .

So far in 2013 ex-cons beat out MBAs for new jobs at Goldman. Like other Wall Street firms, Goldman has found it more efficient to hire ex-cons experienced in fraud and bank robbery.

"MBAs often require 1 to 3 years of on-the-job training before they can overcome their conscience and lose the last shred of human decency. That's a 1 to 3 year drag on performance that we do not suffer with ex-cons. And the ex-cons are happy to start for less pay", according to a top Goldman executive interviewed while recruiting at Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary.